Seven

Before Evan could so much as knock at Kate’s bedchamber door that night, she opened it.

“Come in, come in,” she hissed, grabbing the lapels of his coat and yanking him through the doorway. “I’ve been listening for your footfalls this past quarter hour.”

“I’m glad the footmen don’t wander the corridors at night, or this could become awkward.”

“Says you,” she huffed. “You’re the third person I’ve pulled in here.”

His mouth fell open.

“Only joking.” She winked, easing the door shut behind him and turning the key in the lock.

Now that he got a full look at her, he realized he was distinctly overdressed. He still wore his clothing from supper, a clean and reputable set of garments. Kate, however, was garbed in a dressing robe of cobweb-fine white linen that revealed the lines of an equally translucent night rail beneath. Her feet were bare.

Some sort of greeting was required. “You look…” Delectable. Edible. Ravishing. “…comfortable,” Evan concluded. “If informal, but under the circumstances, that’s to be expected.”

“Oh, I am. Gloriously comfortable.” She sounded anything but. Her hands fluttered, touching her hair. Though still pinned at the back, it had come down in front and curled about her face in eager spirals. “No stays tight around my—well. You cannot imagine the relief.”

“I cannot, that is true. But if the pleasure of having stays removed is anything like the pleasure of removing them, then I felicitate you.”

He took a step forward into the room and realized there was a carpet beneath his feet. The first one he’d seen in Chandler Hall. It was of prodigious size for a bedchamber, patterned over with vines on a background of deep cream.

Similar gentle lines dominated the room: candles in sinuous branches, a large bed with turned wooden posts and sweeping curtains of rich damask. The coverlet was pulled enticingly back at one side. A high-built fire licked its chops, warming the room.

Kate had set the stage for seduction. Like a play, it all seemed rehearsed. “The rogue housekeeper has been here,” he observed. “She has made the room…”

“Comfortable?” Kate paced the length of the carpet, then back, tugging the sash of her dressing robe tight.

Her agitation was welcome, for it was so genuine. Kate, fussing. Kate wanting everything perfect. As though she cared about the impression she presented to him.

Damn. That was a lovely thought, the sort of thought that made him want to settle in and bask. It felt like sun after a long spell of cold.

“Yes, comfortable,” he replied. “To say the least. I am so comfortable, I will sit here and bide a spell.”

Before the hearth were arranged a velvet-covered settee with a low back and tightly scrolled arms, along with a small table on which two tumblers shone with golden liquid. Evan crossed the room to examine them. “Is that whisky? You shouldn’t have. Unless both tumblers are for me, in which case I will have to assume you have improper designs on me.”

This was meant to make her smile, but it only increased her fluttering. “Oh—no, I didn’t. Don’t. That is, it’s not whisky. I couldn’t give you whisky. My father keeps no spirits in the house except for brandy and the red wine often served at dinner. It’s a fine brandy.”

She was speaking quickly, like an over-cranked musical box—and then she wound down.

“I’ve no doubt of the brandy’s quality.” He paused. “Kate, is all this for my benefit?”

“Why, what do you mean?” Seating herself on the red velvet settee, she hitched one leg up and spread the dressing robe about it. Then she lowered her leg again, crossing it over the other. Each time, pale flesh shone new and enticing through the shifting fabric.

The more she fidgeted, the more he wanted to gather her up in his arms and hold her. Settle her. Kiss her into calm and pleasure.

Lord. He was going to die in this room.

Already it had been a long day; agonizingly, sweetly long. They had stayed at the Rowley Mile’s rail for the day’s remaining races, though Evan couldn’t have sworn whether horses or dogs or monkeys ran the course.

No one else fell. He knew that much. One fall was bad enough.

Or had it been a blessing in disguise? Kate had been shaken, badly, at the sight of a prone body on a racecourse. But Evan could recall nothing so determined as the way she lifted her chin and decided to stick out the rest of the schedule.

Perhaps she saw nothing when she looked at the track. Perhaps she was in the Ireland of two years ago, remembering Con’s fall. But she had stood beside Evan and let him hold her, and he helped her not to be alone. Whether or not she knew it, she did the same for him.

“I was thinking”—she spoke again, still wildly rearranging herself on the settee—“that this could be the perfect arrangement. Two friends who care for each other very much, giving each other pleasure.”

The breezy explanation was perfunctory, so much so that it took him aback. From the end of the settee, he peered down at her. “Is that what this invitation meant to you?”

“What else should it have meant?”

“I don’t know that it should mean anything at all.” He sighed, tucking himself beside her at the end of the settee. “Kate. If you want comfort, I’ll comfort you, as innocently as you like. I’m good at brushing hair.”

Thunk. Her just-hoisted foot slid to the floor. “I don’t need my hair brushed.”

“I could let you hold my hand, then. It can be comforting, holding a hand.”

Her shoulders hunched. “I don’t need my hand held either.”

“Good, good. As delightful as that can be, it loses its savor after a while.” He trembled on the edge of honesty, then tipped. “You seem—is this—are you trying to recapture some old closeness? Because I don’t think we—”

“God, no.” She laughed, a shaky, startled burst. “I don’t want to recapture anything, Evan. If I did, you’d be eating porridge, and I’d be sipping whisky, and…well. The whole day would have gone differently.” Her whole body seemed to flush. She was pink and cream, warm colors all over.

Not unaffected, then. He could draw her out. “The day of races?”

“The day of…everything. Today, I decided I was ready for a change.”

“You were thinking of this sort of change,” he said. “Us. Alone. Tonight.”

“I was.” She tied her dressing robe about her more tightly. “I could not stop, once the idea seized me. Damn propriety and all that sort of thing.”

“Then why not untie the robe instead?”

“Well…about that. Now that you are here, I have started to…to think about what we might do.”

“That sounds delightful.” He grappled with the weighty bolster at his side, tugging it free and flinging it over the arm of the settee. “Though from the million pauses in your speech, I wonder if it strikes you the same way.”

“It…does. But I am so aware that you have seen me only in clothes—”

“As opposed to what? Mermaid skins?”

She sputtered. “Is that even a real—never mind… No. You know what I mean. This will be different.”

“It will only be as different as you want it to be.”

“Maybe. That’s what I was hoping. I want different.” She swung her feet, bare toes tapping the floor before the hearth. “Evan, I thought it would be easy. Being different with you. But now…I’m nervous. Are you?”

“No.”

For the sake of graciousness, he probably should not have replied so swiftly. But nervous? Not in the least.

Nervous was waiting not once, but twice, to hear whether she would be safely delivered of a baby, or whether she would lose her life in childbed. Nervous was waiting, five years ago, for her ship to return her across the Irish Sea from her last trip to England.

Nervous was how he felt when her life was at stake. Now? He felt newly born, in all the frailty and triumph that the phrase implied.

“I’m not nervous at all,” he said.

“That’s because you’ve never had babies,” she blurted.

“Er…true. Biology forbids the matter. But how is that relevant?”

“My confinements—they changed me. My body became squishy and…and lumpy.”

“Hold a moment.” He put a hand on her knee, halting the agitated fidget of her leg. “Let me understand. You’re nervous not because we’re about to—what word would you like to put to it?”

“Enjoy each other?”

“Enjoy. I like that. All right, you are nervous not because we’re about to enjoy each other, but because you think childbearing has made you lumpy?”

“Well. Yes. I mean, it’s a bit of the first too, but mostly the latter. You’re so…” She trailed off, waving one hand while the other clutched tightly at the dressing robe.

“For the sake of my frail pride, I shall need you to finish that sentence. I’m what?”

“Fit. Tall. Not lumpy.”

“Part of me is lumpy. One lump, really, but it’s a long one.”

This won from her a chuckle. Good. A few more, and he might have her loosening that grip on her dressing robe, at least enough to enjoy herself.

He folded his arms with mock sternness. “Is this the most convoluted way possible for you to tell me you like the way I look?”

“It…hmm.” She leaned away, the better to allow her gaze to roam him.

As she did so, her movements slowed, calmed, stilled. Top to toe, she studied him, lingering. His face, the line of his shoulders, the planes of his chest. He had never felt so seen as when Kate took the moment, long as a caught breath, to look at him with new eyes.

“Over the years I have known you, I grew used to the way you look,” she said. “I liked it because I liked you.”

“Your use of the past tense fills me with anticipation.” Evan put a hand to his heart. “What of now? Will she let my hopes fly, or will they be cruelly dashed?”

“Ridiculous man. I’m looking at you all over again, and there is nothing about you I do not like.”

His fingers clenched, a quick fist of celebration. Yet he managed to remain glib. “You cannot be looking carefully, but I’m not about to correct you.”

“I cannot? See, that is what makes me nervous. You’re always looking at ancient statues with perfect bodies. All smooth and—and slender.”

He had to laugh. “Are you comparing yourself to a statue? Do you honestly think any man would prefer a statue to a real woman?”

In truth, he’d been comparing all women to her since the moment he met her. An idle lover here, a quick liaison there. At first he had chosen to be with women who looked as much like Kate as possible: strawberry blond, lush of form.

That made his longing worse. So he sought spare-figured brunettes.

That made his longing worse.

For a great while, he’d made do with his hand and his imagination.

She shrugged, her hands a play of awkwardness. “I want you to think I’m perfect.”

“Dear heart, I have known you long enough to know you’re nothing of the sort.”

With an indignant noise, she turned toward him on the settee and clouted him on the arm.

“What is this?” he asked. “You can call yourself lumpy and wobbly, but I cannot so much as say you are imperfect?”

“Right. It’s impolite. And I don’t think I used the word wobbly.”

“Come here,” he said. When she paused, he added, “Just as a friend. Come here.”

He turned on the settee to extend a leg along its length, then held out his arms until she scooted over. Nearer and nearer, tentative and stiff at first. He trailed a hand down her arm, a slow easeful stroke of fingertips. Then back up, then down. Petting her until she relaxed into the angle of his body with a little sigh. She smelled sweet and spicy, like cinnamon over a pastry.

“Now, my friend,” he murmured, “I shall tell you how very imperfect you are.”

“Careful. I have an elbow right beside your seductive bits.”

“All of me is a seductive bit. And if you elbow me, this interlude will come to a quick end.” He caressed her arm, feeling the fine texture of the linen she wore, the soft contour of the limb beneath. “You are far too beautiful for this garment. That’s one flaw.”

“What? I thought it was pretty. What would be better?”

“No garment at all.”

She choked. “Bollocks.”

“That can be arranged.”

She tilted her head, sinking against his chest languidly, her curls pillowed on his shoulder. “What of my other flaws?”

“Your hair is ridiculous.”

“Oh—”

“Not in its color, which is of a shade to make you look ladylike and wild at once. Not the curls, which make me want to twine my fingers through them.” He suited his action to his words, easing a U-shaped pin free as he did. “No, it is ridiculous that your hair is confined in pins. Let it be loose.” He paused. “Unless you like the pins. I mustn’t order you about, after you have so thoughtfully poured me two tumblers of brandy.”

“No, I don’t need the pins. I always take them out at night. But it seemed excessive to greet you with unbound hair.”

“If I can see you without stays and not faint from the shock, I can manage the sight of your hair.”

He was wrong about this—wrong indeed. For as she eased herself upright from his chest, turning to face him, he was undone by the sight of her. Curves outlined by firelight, breasts lifting against the fine linen as she tugged pin after pin loose. With each hairpin she laid on the seat between them, another winding curl fell free. Tangled in wild spirals, all shifting shades of light brown and pale red and blond. Her hair fell down her back, danced against her collarbone, whispered over her cheek.

“You are so beautiful.” He could not help but speak the words. Not to speak them would be to lie.

“Right.” She pulled a face. “So beautiful that I ought to strip this not-pretty-enough garment free?”

“No.” He reached out, touching a curl that caressed her neck. “So beautiful. That is all.”

“But…” Her strong brows knit. “I don’t understand.”

“We’ll do what you wish.”

“What about what you wish?”

“You invited me to your bedchamber. Even if I do nothing but touch your hair and look at your beautiful curves through that wispy robe of yours, I will have more than I could have wished for.” She yelped and crossed her arms over her breasts. “You are not perfect, Kate. But you are just right.”